Basics
So, how do you get better at this game in any trackable, specific manner? Don’t ask me, I suck at this game. --Kuma Making Loadouts When you make a loadout you have to consider the units and mechs you use carefully. The mech and units have to compliment each other and if you’re going for a specific purpose, fulfill it sufficiently. When you make a loadout, here are the aspects you have to consider, and situations it might be faced with and how well it will cope with each. Go down this list and consider carefully what you can do (and how you can counter) with a loadout for each of these: *Tank columns *Unit blobs *Artillery *Mechs *Infantry spam *Drops *Money requirements *Map awareness Minimap It’s your best friend. If you keep getting ambushed and have way more WTF!! moments than you would like, learn to love your minimap. Spend games operating almost entirely by minimap. I know mechs look cool, but you don’t need to look at yourself flying somewhere unless you’re fighting. You will see enemies on radar much sooner than on your screen. For bonus effect, use radar guardians to see the whole map. Mnob: note that not seeing enemy units on the map doesnt mean you are safe, there may be artillery set out of your radar range but still hitting your units. Outposts Like it or not, they’re here to stay, and controlling them gives HUGE bonuses. There is never a time when you want to have less outposts than the other team. So learn to like em too and spam them infs. OR if you’re smart you’ll look at your map and grab the creeps for your inf spamming needs. Adding botspawners is an easy way to counter drops within your territory, since the runner spam will most times be sufficient to stop caps from single ninjas and help counter double ninjas. They also are a dirt cheap way to take over undefended posts and maintaining map control in general. A unit that spams inf for you, what’s not to like? Spend a few games just taking over outposts and let your team deal with the rest. Survivability This game has gotten a lot more lethal in the last few patches, but it’s not ridiculous or OP. As long as you maintain good position and know when to pull out, you will not die all that often. How do you know how to maintain position and when to pull out? Just takes practice, I suppose, but some good rules of thumb is if you’re far from your outposts, don’t land if there are any mechs nearby, and be very careful if there are AA. If you are far from your outpost and a mech comes in near its outpost, might as well bail, you won’t win that fight and might just die yourself; retreat and regroup. It is almost never worth it to jump into the lion’s maw to try to finish that kill. And don’t banzai charge 30 tanks >_> If you want to do extreme survivor practice, use ken if you have him. Teamwork Just Do It. If you have a friend in need, go help. If there’s a big push coming, go help defending. If friend took over an outpost, and is holding his own, but preoccupied, go harass the enemy somewhere else to get the heat off him. If friend is pushing, at least come and shoot some stuff with his units or keep mechs off them. If he’s 1v2-3 dogfighting, go assist so he at least can run away. Opponent Possibility Horizon Fancy term for basically what your opponent can possibly do. Being able to estimate or predict your opponent’s possibility horizon won’t contribute to your direct fighting strength, but it will tip you off if something is off. You get some amount of money per period of time, you get more or less depending on your moneymaker count and outposts. Once you scout, you can guesstimate the amount of money that’s been put into the units you saw, allowing you find the delta with the amount of money they SHOULD have and see what they can do. If delta is 0, then there won’t be any surprises. if delta is 50k+ and they’re over lvl 7, you should expect a full queue of goliaths to crash down on you. Try to keep track of the stuff you destroy to factor into this. This is the monetary horizon, there’s also the temporal. If you see your opponent fighting on the frontlines, there’s nothing to worry about, he’s where you can see him and limit the damage. But if he has been gone from your sights for a minute or more, do a quick scout to make sure he’s not doing anything funky. For reference: Fort: 160 cr/sec : 9600 cr/min Outposts: 20 (Normal and Factory)/ 25 (Power station) cr/sec : 1200/1500 cr/min MM’s: 1/2/3 player : 75/50/37 cr/5sec/MM/player : 900/600/450 cr/min/MM/player : 75/100/111 cr/5sec/MM : 900/1200/1350 cr/min/MM So a 2v2 team with a fort and two outposts with 10 MM’s will make about 36000 credits per minute. If they don’t put out that much worth of stuff on the field, they’re floating either accidentally or on purpose. By minute 10, that’s already 360000 credits that should be in play. Power Management Here to replace the old popcap system, it makes the game a ton more interesting. You get more with time, by capturing outposts and by building generators. You lose it by building and maintaining units. So how do you play this to your advantage? There are a number of ways. You can always wait for the enemy to overbuild and then kill their gens or capping their outposts. If you wish to go for a high aggro game, use moneymakers and spam unit assaults as fast as income allows, so that you're never power bound. That allows you to build faster and attack faster and defend faster than the guys who turtle all day long. Money Usage Don’t float. Don’t throw units to their deaths one by one unless you’re sure you’ll get something out of it. Every tank wasted is a tank used to ball up and roll your opponent. But letting your money sit in bank won’t give you any benefit either. Mech Usage Don’t banzai a herd of seekers. Watch where you’re going and pull out when there’s even a hint of danger. Dying is not that bad in this game, but it costs money and time that your opponents will take to kill your defenseless units. Unit Usage Learn what each of your units do. Know what path they will take if you tell them to Y or T attack. Use links to organize attacks beforehand (link sucks for big groups atm). Use patrol to tell units to go to a specific spot. You can tell a unit or a group of units to just about anywhere on the map with patrol and link commands or patrol and repeat order. Know what your units can and can’t handle. If they’re in trouble don’t just leave them to die, assist them or try to bail out as many as possible. Minimize losses at all times.